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by draftsman 13 days ago
I find very little joy in trying to wrangle the blackboxes that are LLMs. The undeterministic nature of them frustrates me, and feels nothing like the software engineering I know and love. However, I know I’m in the minority here, as almost everyone else in the industry I’ve talked to seems to love using them.
4 comments
layer8 13 days ago
I agree with you. It’s actually similar to the frustration of using ill-documented, ill-behaved libraries or tools that are either closed-source or otherwise inscrutable. They may even be deterministic, but what’s frustrating is when you can’t reason about their behavior, can’t predict what will happen when you change x to y.
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hootz 13 days ago
A lot of people here agree with you, and I definitely get what you are saying! It's a personal thing in the end, as people enjoy different things even in the same areas of expertise, and there are definitely a LOT of things to criticise AI about (and the companies around them).
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jimbokun 13 days ago
Well just look around Hacker News. Many many here expressing the same frustrations as you.

The deterministic nature of programming drew many of use to it, and that going away can create a crisis of identity.

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steve_adams_86 13 days ago
I absolutely love deterministic, reliable, robust software so I find the challenge of non-deterministic agents completely fascinating and exciting. Programming for the user has always been a challenge (especially in the browser where the environment itself isn't consistent), and now we have the same kinds of challenges across the stack.

I'm enjoying that aspect of it so much. How can we make it safer, more reliable, predictable? I don't think we'll have totally satisfactory answers for a long time, and it'll be a lot of fun to explore the space until we get there.

I think what really kills me is allowing non-deterministic agents to write non-deterministic code and not really being critical of the process or the results. That's poison for our industry, newcomers to the field, and frankly the profession itself. I'd like to see us take this more seriously.

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